Garage researcher "burns" saltwater
John Kanzius, a retired TV station owner, believes he's come up with a way to "burn" saltwater, by bombarding it with microwaves.
The TV reports on this YouTube compilation never dip-below the gee-whiz surface, unfortunately. I'm guessing what's happening here is the radiation is splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The salt has nothing to do with it, and the radio wave energy used to split the water exceeds the amount of energy produced by the flame, resulting in a net loss.
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It will never work as well as the snake oil engine.
it probably needs the salt to make the water conductive. distilled water by itself is actually nonconductive.
Good point about the salt making the water conductive.
I'm glad to see some skepticism regarding any of these purported 'energy' machines. There's been too much credulous reporting on other sites recently.
I'm pretty sure it's not the radiation splitting the water into ions.
Microwave radiation is non-ionizing radiation - it can excite the molecules but not ionize them.
Ionizing radiation must be above 33eV.
I've been trying to convince my idiot friends that it uses more energy than it makes, but they're convinced that it's a miracle. Maybe I should just give in and try to sell them a patent on it.
This guy is from my home town. His name is spelled John Kanzius. Another invention under his belt which has received (I think) substantial funding is a cancer treatment that also uses high power radio waves focused into a beam. They are apparently not Xrays. By injecting the person with some sort of nano particle that binds to cancerous cells, he can effectively target only the cancer cells and leave the rest relatively untouched.
He is reporting that the salt water energy recovery is currently at 76% but is playing around with it to see what comes of it I think.
Since water has already been "burned", that direction leads nowhere. (Apart from the unrealized promise of fusion.)
We've been using up the easily combustible energy sources ... and created problems that way. So, inventors and researchers, we don't need more ways to "combust" stored energy, we need more ways to collect and store ambient (solar, wind, etc.) energy. While combustion was good for Ook (except when his body hair caught fire), hopefully we can avoid creating new ways to do that.
have none of you made spaghetti before? everyone knows that if you add salt to water it boils faster, so of course he's getting out more energy than he's putting in. its staggering to imagine how much power he could generate if only he would put the lid on.
So what if it uses more energy than it creates? Think of the potential as a weapon - use the radio wave beam to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen around a ship at sea, and use a second laser beam or common incendiary device to set it on fire - I'm sure the pentagon could spend billions trying to turn this into a useful satellite weapon.
@ comment #9:
Salt water actually does not boil faster. Adding salt to the water raises the boiling point of the mixture to above 100 deg. C, so that the spaghetti is being cooked at a higher temperature.
(But the rest of your comment sounds sarcastic, so if you knew that already, just call this a PSA for the readers..)
Even if it's output is a net loss in a vacuum, it certainly wouldn't be used in one.
For example, once a car is running/moving It can use it's momentum to power other processes (radios, generators, etc). So why couldn't this car have an electric starter and small engine to get it moving, and then switch over to the salt-water engine - powered by existing inertia.
It's not 'free' energy, but who cares. Purity is for the unimaginative.
This is actually a pretty cool invention. You could potentially use it to weld without lugging tanks of flammable gas around. It would never run out of control as once you turn off the microwaves the gas stops getting generated.
I was under the impression that water is the byproduct of an exergonic chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen, i.e. one that releases more energy than it consumes.
Oxygen and hydrogen molecules, although stable, are in a relatively high-energy state to begin with. You need a moderate amount of energy to start the reaction, then it will fuel itself and release vast amounts of energy, usually in the form of heat.
The consequence is that 2 molecules of water "contain" less energy than the one molecule of oxygen and the two molecules of hydrogen they came from.
So, if you're going to split water back into oxygen and hydrogen, you will have to bring it back up to an energy level that's at least equal to that of the original components -- and then add some more, since a significant part of the energy spent will inevitably be lost to entropy.
From there, you may of course combine again oxygen and hydrogen to make water + energy you can use. However, you're only getting back what you consumed in the first place, minus energy lost to entropy and to start the splitting reaction. In summary, a seriously negative balance.
Looks like he has just wired up an old magnetron from a microwave oven. Aside from the considerable high voltage hazard there are also dangers associated with the operation of unshielded magnetrons.
In particular, the lens of the eye has no cooling blood flow it is particularly prone to overheating when exposed to microwave radiation. This heating can in turn lead to a higher incidence of cataracts in later life.
Who is this guy, Team Blue Laser?
That maniac's gonna blow up the ocean!
to frowelishnu's comment...
i don't think it's inconceivable that the splitting is done via a multi-photon process. there are quite a few chemical reactions that can be driven via multi-photon processes (with each photon not having enough energy on its own). it just makes the entire process that much more inefficient since you have to hope that 2 or more photons are hanging out in the same general vicinity to pump the reaction rather than just one......
to comment #10....
while i'm sure the geniuses at the pentagon, who for some reason can't find a crank concept they don't love, are probably already looking into this. if the process is a net loss (and i'm sure it is), then wouldn't it be better to just direct the energy that one would use to to break up the water molecules on the actual target itself......
If the method is not actually electrolysing hydrogen and oxygen from salt water, I wonder if the salt (and excitation from radio waves) is simply a method for introducing nucleation sites around which dissolved oxygen and hydrogen can form bubbles and escape from the water?
That makes me wonder if he could get a larger effect if he used tap water and mentos~!
Mentos TM - The "FuelMaker!"
If only it weren't for that whole 1/Distance^3 issue, I'm sure it would make a great satellite weapon.
Neat effect, but probably not particularly useful, in the long run. If he can actually realistically target and excise cancer cells with it, more power to him, though.
Both my wife and I are convinced we saw the same 1970s science film in the 1980s showing how salt water could burn when introduced to electricity. How is this different or new? I'm lost.
What you see here is an ICP. Inductivly Coupled Plasma generated by Radio Waves. ICP Mass Spectrometery is used by Analyitical Chemists every day. I saw one working at the CSIRO labs at Lucas Heights (Australia). The plasma is hot enough to splt bonds between atoms so they can see what things are made of. If you could get energy from this. I'm sure the smart Physisists and Chemists would have done so by now.
PS (I like the Snake Oil Engine Comment by Flying Squid)
Thanx, Chris.
I'm guessing what's happening here is the radiation is splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The salt has nothing to do with it, and the radio wave energy used to split the water exceeds the amount of energy produced by the flame, resulting in a net loss.
You said microwaves at first. It's radio waves.
And yes, this is a net loss of energy. This will not generate power.
I'm actually pretty impressed that with a few exceptions most of the youtube commenters seem to basically see through this right away. Not impressed with the news coverage, sigh.
A neat little demo, but I agree that there is no way this could be done without spending more energy on burning the water than could ever be gained in the process. They're simply separating and rejoining the molecules, and there will always be a loss in the conversion.
IF this could be done with low energy consumption, and if they could figure out a way to keep the gases from recombining after they depart from the water, then it could perhaps be a good way to separate the molecules and store the individual gases for later use as fuel. Ultimately though, the energy that allows this will always have to come from another source.
If the color of the light in the photograph is any indication, I would have to say the "burning" is actually photons emitted from the sodium atoms in the salt. If he were actually burning hydrogen and oxygen the flame would not be visible to the naked eye (though I suppose the sodium and chlorine could be caught up in the comubstion reaction as well, which would make it visible).
There were several long-running threads in various energy-related Usenet groups over the last year or so where someone calling himself "Flavored Coffee Guy" made claims similar to this. I don't recall him adding salt to the water, but he claimed to separate hydrogen and oxygen by microwaving plain old water.
Dan't data letter #186 (scroll down) also turns on this crank.
If he could just find a way to recombobulate the zero point energons to his flux capaitor he could get the wankel fluons to hydomelitize with the flaxenwaxen....
This device already exists and it's normally called a contactless microwave lamp. It obeys the first law of thermodynamics just like every other kind of light bulb.
http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/GERI/RFM/79240.htm
The yellow colour here is from the sodium D lines, but the gas atoms used in the plasma and the pressure can be optimised to produce intense white or UV light.
Yep, it's not "burning" at all. It's just an electric arc. Most people who play with microwave ovens will have seen this same phenomenon. Once an electric arc is triggered inside a microwave oven, it will exist as long as the RF is applied, and it resembles a blowtorch. Add some salt for a bright yellow/orange "flame."
It's called an "electrodeless discharge." But in his case, the salt water acts as one electrode. -Bill Beaty
Unfortunately what people are neglecting to realize, is that when you make fuel from salt water, ie. hydrogen, there is a very dangerous by product. Chlorine. A very toxic and deadly poison. Salt water might speed up the electrolysis proccess but at a VERY deadly cost.
Stan
Actually when adding salt to water it causes it to boil at a higher temperature. Therefore it boils "slower" but when it does boil your spaghetti cooks "faster" because of the increased temperature.
Stan
"You said microwaves at first. It's radio waves."
Uh . . . microwaves ARE radio waves, genius!
OK... here is how you could feasably get a positive energy gain. Chemists, let me know if I am in error. We know that water dissociates into its constituent H+ on OH- ions at a certain rate at all times. Add salt to this and we introduce Na+ and Cl- ions to the solution which will combine with the OH- and H+ ions to form HCl and NaOH in minute quantities, but the solution will always attempt to maintain this balance because the dissociation constant requires that these levels be mantained. So, the electomagnetic waves are not actually breaking apart the water, rather they break apart the minute amount of HCl in solution. Since HCl has a much lower bonding energy than that of water it takes less energy to break it up. If it is in fact breaking the HCl bonds the solution will constantly replace the used HCl and we will have a self sustaining reaction. This is the only way I can possibly see for this reaction to have a net positve energy release.
That is the coolest sodium lamp I have ever seen.
As is the usual case it takes more energy to make the radio waves to burn the hydrogen than the burning creates, resulting in a net loss of energy. You just can't seem to get around that thermodynamics law, can you.... Unless? Is is possible to use the radio waves that constantly bombard the earth from outer space to maintain the burning of the saltwater? Is it possible to collect a large amount of radio waved over a relatively large land area and concentrate them enough to maintain the burn? Obviously we couldn't use this in cars, but it could be used at an electric generating station. Is this possible?
Chris
After further consideration it seems that chlorine is not released in the reaction. Seems it should be if my earlier comment were to hold any water... haha. So, how about a resonance frequence that is haromonic with the “bonding” frequency between the sp2 orbitals causing a collapse of the bond? Something like when a light wind destroys a bridge when blowing at the right speed? Really airing one out there, but my hopes are that this is one of the most amazing discoveries of the 20th century. I fear that like cold-fusion, it is all to-good-to-be-true.
Furthermore... a comment on the above post by Chris... collecting the energy to "burn" the water into hydrogen would be inefficient if indeed this were an inefficient reaction to begin with. Am sure that we do much better with a solar cell at this point... why intruduce the extra step?
Can anybody state the facts of the experiment please. How many watts of RF, what frequency, how many Watts out.